Sounds to me you have a botched install of AHP. If you backdated to 3.204 and kept it do the following. Back up any .ahx files you created and delete AHP and all folders it established when first installed. Then re-install 3.204 and update that to 3.228, then open AHP and set it up for your proper location, then open your .ahx file.
Finally got around to trying this today, but it didn't work ... deleted AHP and all folders and files I could find, then installed ahp_updt_204.exe and let it update itself to 3.228 ... AHP opened after the install and I clicked Tools --> Hardware Configuration and it locked up as before ...
So I started all over again ... installed 3.204, but didn't update right away ... instead, I went into Tools --> Hardware Configuration and the window opened but didn't give me the opportunity to enter my city from the pull-down ... it was set to "Custom" and had a weird set of lat/long values entered ... so I looked up my lat/long and entered it in manually, which caused the dusk/dawn times to adjust correctly ... I then clicked the button to update the controller ... then I updated to 3.228 and added my XPS3 with a dusk/dawn timer ... still need to install the plug-ins, but I'll wait to see if this works first ...